KEP Dictation Argument: The Evidence

[_Nomad]

I'd like to submit the following challenge (as presented to DarthJ above) to everyone participating on this thread:

I tell you what, let’s do a little test. I have in mind a particular short story by a famous American author. It is only 4½ pages long. The story takes place in Italy. Two men are the principal characters. I want you to make a list of 50 “substantial words.” Then we’ll compare that list of words to the story, and see if over 90% of the words on your list appear in that story. If you can even achieve a hit ratio of 30%, I’ll be impressed. You can’t include any articles, conjunctions, or prepositions, or any words with only generic application. They have to be very unique words, with very specific applications, similar in nature to the “unique” words as Schryver classified them in his study.

Here’s a list of ten words (selected from my post) that I would consider “unique” in the same way Schryver classified the EA words in his study.

• logical
• method
• theory
• audience
• papyrus
• Wonderland
• classification
• dictation
• manuscript
• illustrate

As soon as you complete and post your list, I will compare it to the story and see how successfully you were able to select only unique words that come from that story.

[_wenglund]

Having extricated myself from the conversational blackhole that is Darth J, I will be pleased to now move on to address Markk's question:

Wade why was the code produced, to keep Anthon from reading the words of Abraham, Jacob, and Moses? Let me know why you believe it was produced?

I have no idea why you brought Anthon up in relation to the KEP, but as I understand things thus far, the KEP were produced with the intent of serving two purposes: 1) to keep sensative religious information hidden (so as to preserve faith, protect the sacred from the profane, and prevent over-burdening and misuse of sacred knowledge), and 2) for exegetical or hermeneutical purposes (a means for initiates to gain a more in-depth understanding of God and his kingdom). In short, the purpose of the KEP was to function as a "pure language", not unlike what may be found with Kabbalah and Hebrew.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Guest]

No assumption is necessary. Both Schryver and maklelan have presented conclusive evidence that the EAG is dependent on a pre-existing text. I have yet to see anyone address that evidence, other than to just summarily dismiss it.

Whereas I have yet to see anyone address, "even if that's true, so what?"

The reason he may have created this prop is to prove that he could read all these ancient, mysterious writings---he translated the papyrus by the power of God, and now he's going to show that he knows all these mysteries about the language of the ancients. An after-the-fact prop is no less magician's patter than before-the-fact talk about the mystical arts of the Orient.

An interesting speculation, but one that has no basis in evidence or precedent.

Kind of like the "cipher," you mean? Kind of like how you can make up any number of guesses about what people's motives were, but you still come back to that nagging elephant in the room?

I know that Schryver and his emissaries, like you, want to divorce history from your cipher mania, but unfortunately Michael Chandler signed a document indicating that Joseph Smith could read the Egyptian characters at the time Joseph Smith first obtained the papyri, and if you're an inspired hallucination fan (though you prefer to call it "catalyst"), the papyri are still what set this "translation" in motion.

First off, does anyone really believe that Chandler was in a position to know whether or not Joseph Smith’s translation was accurate? I think it’s pretty obvious that the only thing Chandler was interested in was getting his money and leaving town. I’m pretty sure he would have signed an affidavit that Joseph Smith could walk on water, if it meant putting $2400 in his pocket for the trip back home.

And yet this affidavit is in the History of the Church, as is this:

“I commenced the translation of some of the characters or hieroglyphics, and much to our joy found that one of the rolls contained the writings of Abraham. . . . Truly we can say, the Lord is beginning to reveal the abundance of peace and truth” ( History of the Church, 2:236).

What we are in a position to know is that Joseph Smith went along with Chandler's claim.

As for the arrival of the papyri being a catalyst for the reception of the translation of the Book of Abraham, no one is disputing that. Perhaps you can explain why you think Schryver’s thesis is affected either way. I can’t see how the quesiton of the dependency of the EAG on the Book of Abraham is affected at all, nor the hypothesis that the EAG represents an attempted encipherment of Joseph Smith’s revelations.

This is the same Schryver who thinks the facsimiles should be removed from the canon. And the way it is affected from a religious standpoint is that the catalyst theory implies that Joseph Smith did not understand how revelation works, but apologists do. The real problem about Joseph Smith's statements (and his companions) about translating the Egyptian characters has been summarized by someone other than me:

"Whether he spoke as a prophet or as a mere man, he has committed himself, for he has said what is not true. If he spoke as a prophet, therefore, he is a false prophet. If he spoke as a mere man, he cannot be trusted, for he spoke positively and like an oracle respecting that which he knew nothing."

And you also are not talking about who Joseph Smith's audience was: largely unschooled frontier people who believed that a magic rock in a hat was a perfectly acceptable explanation for the Book of Mormon, and who had a very different worldview than any of us.

Your reading of history is dramatically different than my own. No doubt many early Mormons were, like their neighbors, “unschooled frontier people.” But that hardly describes the majority of them, especially those who rose to prominence in the movement like William Phelps, Oliver Cowdery, Frederick Williams, Warren Parrish, the Pratts, John Taylor, Lorenzo Snow, and many, many others. Not only that, but the “audience” for the EAG appears to have been a very small subset of Mormons-a group that included only the most accomplished people, like Phelps and Parrish.

I'm talking about the overall church membership audience for the Book of Abraham, and if you have any information about W.W. Phelps, Oliver Cowdery, etc. knowing Egyptian from random scribblings in the dirt, you let us all know. Cherry-picking a few prominent early Mormons as "the majority of them" must be how you counteract "false stereotypes" of people on the 1830's frontier who had neither a 21st century worldview nor information technology.

All your false stereotyping does is reveal you to lack the objectivity necessary to assess the issue without prejudice. No surprise there.

So today, early church leadership was educated and well-read and could not have been fooled by all this, whereas at other times they were semi-literate hillbillies who could not possibly have made all this stuff up. Thank you for clarifying the apologetic position of convenience at this particular moment.

And "the issue" is, "even if you're right, so what?" Do you intend to explain that in my lifetime?

I'm not saying this is my theory; I'm wondering why nobody seems to be considering this.

I’m sure most of the people here will be willing to consider any illogical scenario you can come up with. After all, that’s what they do best.

Feel free to provide an example of this. Oh, and Nomad, back around the 24th of July you talked about all this anger I have towards Mormons and Mormonism, but have still failed to provide a factual basis for this statement. Are you ever going to do that, or do you just kind of make pronouncements and argue by assertion? You know, like saying Will is conclusively right when you have no expertise that would make you competent to make that determination? Or saying that there was this great big bizarre cipher project for which there is no historical evidence?

It's at least as likely as creating the cipher idea out of whole cloth.

Whole cloth? lol! The evidence for the cipher idea is, to use Schryver’s exact words, “abundant and compelling.”

And since that evidence exists entirely of Will's words, that is exactly what you will have to use.

There is tons of textual evidence, as well as historical. Only here in Wonderland can such evidence be so easily dismissed. I’m sure it will play a lot better in scholarly circles where blind bigotry and stubborn ignorance are not as prevalent as they are here.

You must mean all those scholarly circles that consider the Book of Abraham to be an authentic translation of an ancient scripture. Now where again might I find these tons of historical evidence about the cipher?

By the way, why isn't Hauglid as impressed as you are? I guess he must be just another moron who doesn't know anything.

Why do you think he isn’t? Did I miss something? As far as I know, Hauglid is convicned that the Schryver theses are 100% correct. Do you have evidence to the contrary? Please share.

What is truly spectacular about this is that the statement to which I am referring is specifically in the context of Hauglid responding to you.

In my view the use of the potent term "conclusive," even in the context of the benign "it appears," is premature at this stage.

http://www.mormonapologetics.org/topic/ ... 1208901600

Speaking of making things up, have you found that historical evidence about Joseph Smith or his companions thinking they were creating a cipher yet, or an example of them attempting to use this mess to encipher anything?

Schryver has found at least three examples of where the cipher was used. I have seen them. As far as I can tell, the evidence is incontrovertible. They combined the meanings of multiple characters to produce sentences.

Okay. Let's see them.

But these examples also serve to illustrate how useless the thing would have been, which is no doubt part of the reason they abandoned the project so soon. As Schryver said in the Deseret News article, “It just didn’t work.” That’s why they gave it up not long after they started.

Again, since Will's words are all we have, naturally this is the evidence on which you rely.

So, Nomad does not know how Schryver decided which words were "unique" and which words were "generic," nor which words Joseph Smith would have considered to be "unique" and which would have been "generic." Does anyone else want to try?

What are you talking about? Sometimes I think you have serious psychological problems.

Here's the DSM-IV online: http://allpsych.com/disorders/dsm.html

I await your learned diagnosis.

Why do you think what Joseph Smith thought about “unique” and “generic” words would have any relevance at all to Schryver’s study?

I don't think that what Joseph Smith thought has any relevance at all to Schryver's study. That's my point.

You say you’ve watched the video, and yet you still don’t seem to understand the logic behind the substantial word study. It really isn’t that hard to comprehend, if you ask me. He extracted the substantial words from the EA explanations. He categorized those words as either “unique” or “generic.” The classification process was, quite obviously, subjective. But the logic is sound. Words like:

blood
commandments
creation
eternity
follower
glory
government
minister
ordained

Were judged to be more unique in their application than words like:

after
before
end
father
first
God
good
heaven
land

I can see the logic behind the classification here. “Blood” is a much more “unique” word than “before”. “Commandments” much more unique than “end”. “Creation” much more unique than “good”.

Okay. WHY is "eternity" more unique than "God"? By what objective standard were these judgments made?

I’ve seen the detail analysis of the study. I could not identify any methodological problems with it.

Well if you couldn't identify any problems, then there must not be any.

In fact, I thought it was a stroke of genius to analyze the Egyptian Alphabet in that way.

Because it makes the evidence fit the theory.

The study demonstrates rigor as well as a very conservative interpretation of the results. I thought the unique words should have been given a lot more weight than he assigned to them. Even so, just looking at the list of substantial words you can easily see that someone would have had to already know the content of the Book of Abraham in order to create that list. If you didn’t already know the content of the Book of Abraham, it simply would not be possible to create a list of 100 unique words and have over 90% of them be among the words used in the book. It’s a very persuasive study, and I can’t wait to see it published. I think it will be very difficult for anyone to effectively dispute its results and the conclusions that follow from those results.

So, like, you read the Book of Abraham, pick a bunch of words, and arbitrarily/subjectively decide which were "unique" and which were "generic" in the context of this cipher that Joseph Smith was supposed to have been making up but did not use, and the challenge to critics of this theory is to make up your own workable cipher when the theory posits that Joseph Smith failed at doing so. Very persuasive, indeed.

And why does this ultimately matter, again?

Nomad, if the "unique" vs. "generic" isn't relevant, then why did Schryver talk about it at all, and why did he use it to introduce his methodology?

Once again we see evidence of the fact that you aren’t paying attention.

I never said the “unique” vs. “generic” classification wasn’t relevant. I don’t believe it isn’t relevant. Obviously, it is relevant, as well as logical.

You said above that I am asking about things that I imagine to be relevant but aren't.

Your "test" will be in another post.

[_Darth J]

I tell you what, let’s do a little test. I have in mind a particular short story by a famous American author. It is only 4 ½ pages long. The story takes place in Italy. Two men are the principal characters. I want you to make a list of 50 “substantial words.” Then we’ll compare that list of words to the story, and see if over 90% of the words on your list appear in that story. If you can even achieve a hit ratio of 30%, I’ll be impressed. You can’t include any articles, conjunctions, or prepositions, or any words with only generic application. They have to be very unique words, with very specific applications, similar in nature to the “unique” words as Schryver classified them in his study.

Here’s a list of ten words (selected from my post) that I would consider “unique” in the same way Schryver’s classified the EA words in his study.

• logical
• method
• theory
• audience
• papyrus
• Wonderland
• classification
• dictation
• manuscript
• illustrate

As soon as you complete and post your list, I will compare it to the story and see how successfully you were able to select only unique words that come from that story.

You still have never explained how Schryver or you are deciding whether a word is "unique" or "generic."

"[A] particular short story by a famous American author. It is only 4 ½ pages long. The story takes place in Italy. Two men are the principal characters."

Of course, how many pages it is depends on what edition you are reading. So here you go:

injuries
revenge
retribution
connosisserurship
gemmary
vintages
carnival
motley
Amontillado
Sherry
vaults
engagement
nitre
distinguish
mask
roqeulaire
flambeaux
catacombs
staircase
rheum
intoxication
draught
Medoc
bottle
defend
damps
azure
serpent
bells
puncheons
brotherhood
masons
crypt
walls
Paris
bones
granite
ignoramus
mortar
trowel
niche
staples
padlock
links
moaning
obstinate
tier
clanking
rapier
clamorer
screams
joke
palazzo
wine
aperture
jingling
century
rampart

[_Darth J]

Having extricated myself from the conversational blackhole that is Darth J

Good idea, Wade. Just put it on the shelf.

[_Darth J]

I tell you what, let’s do a little test. I have in mind a particular short story by a famous American author. It is only 4 ½ pages long. The story takes place in Italy. Two men are the principal characters. I want you to make a list of 50 “substantial words.” Then we’ll compare that list of words to the story, and see if over 90% of the words on your list appear in that story. If you can even achieve a hit ratio of 30%, I’ll be impressed. You can’t include any articles, conjunctions, or prepositions, or any words with only generic application. They have to be very unique words, with very specific applications, similar in nature to the “unique” words as Schryver classified them in his study.

Here’s a list of ten words (selected from my post) that I would consider “unique” in the same way Schryver’s classified the EA words in his study.

• logical
• method
• theory
• audience
• papyrus
• Wonderland
• classification
• dictation
• manuscript
• illustrate

As soon as you complete and post your list, I will compare it to the story and see how successfully you were able to select only unique words that come from that story.

You still have never explained how Schryver or you are deciding whether a word is "unique" or "generic."

"[A] particular short story by a famous American author. It is only 4 ½ pages long. The story takes place in Italy. Two men are the principal characters."

Of course, how many pages it is depends on what edition you are reading. So here you go:

injuries
revenge
retribution
connosisserurship
gemmary
vintages
carnival
motley
Amontillado
Sherry
vaults
engagement
nitre
distinguish
mask
roqeulaire
flambeaux
catacombs
staircase
rheum
intoxication
draught
Medoc
bottle
defend
damps
azure
serpent
bells
puncheons
brotherhood
masons
crypt
walls
Paris
bones
granite
ignoramus
mortar
trowel
niche
staples
padlock
links
moaning
obstinate
tier
clanking
rapier
clamorer
screams
joke
palazzo
wine
aperture
jingling
century
rampart

By the way, everyone, you don't even need to wait for Nomad on this challenge. Go ahead and decide for yourself about 50 "unique" words from "a particular short story by a famous American author that is only 4 ½ pages long (depending on what edition you are reading), that takes place in Italy, and has two men as the principal characters."

http://www.literature.org/authors/poe-e ... llado.html

[_Aristotle Smith]

Close. You got the right words, but in the wrong order. It should read "HID IN HERE".

No Wade, you did it wrong. You need to rotate the image 90 degrees counterclockwise so that the text reads left to right, top to bottom. That's how English works. When you do that you get this (IN HERE HID):

I have no problem redily admitting that I am far from capable of meeting your challenge. I trust that proves whatever point you intended to make.

Oh, I had no point Wade, other than to demonstrate that your tests and games are silly and pointless. Since you are such a fan of giving people silly assignments in an attempt to edumacate them, I thought I would return the favor.

Cheers.

[_Darth J]

In short, the purpose of the KEP was to function as a "pure language", not unlike what may be found with Kabbalah and Hebrew.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

You don't say.

http://www.farmsnewsite.farmsresearch.c ... m=1&id=181

[_beastie]

I’m going to try, once again, to help Wade see the weakness of his theory.

Let’s pretend I’m going to make a secret code. I want to pick out neat looking figures for my secret code, and pick out such figures from different sources. One such source is a genuine Egyptian papyri, so I use some of those figures, along with others I pick up elsewhere. I use them in a grid for my secret code.

Now, according to Wade, no one could feasibly believe that my secret code contained some genuine Egyptian figures because I had mixed them with other elements and was using them in a grid-like code. In fact, if such a person were collecting genuine Egyptian figures for some purpose, there is no way that they would select those genuine Egyptian figures from my secret code to be used in such a collection – all because I used the figures mixed in with others in a grid-like code.

Get it now, Wade?

Yes, I believe I do get it now.

I suppose it is possible that someone might have wanted to construct a grid from which to create her own cipher characters, may have, instead of taking a few moments to simply draw the grid, spent countless hours scour through Egyptian papyri that she may or may not have had in her possession, looking for characters that she could peace together like a puzzle to form the lines of the grid, and once the grid is formed, dissect the grid into characters in such a way as to ignore the underlining Egyptian characters.

Such an enterprise would make no sense whatsoever, but it is remotely possible that someone like you might do this, particularly if she is doing so to create the illusion in her mind of not being wrong on a relatively insignificant point. :)

However, the best way to substantiate your point would be to do, yourself, just as you suggest. I invite you to illustrate your point by utilizing the internet to your advantage, and search through Egyptian papyri and construct a Masonic cipher grid (you can use the one that Chris posted earlier). See if in the process of making the attempt the thought doesn't spring to mind just how highly unlikely such a thing is. I look forward to your results--complete with explanations of what Egyptian characters you used, where you got them from, and where in the grid you placed them. Good luck with that.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

No, clearly you still don’t get it, or you’re just buying time with your silly challenge.

Joseph Smith had papyri in his possession, and had already spent hours scouring it. Joseph Smith was also familiar with the Masonic cipher in question (if that is, indeed, the origin of other elements, which is being contested by some). All Joseph Smith would have to do is, probably with the help of “revelation”, to pick figures out of the Masonic cipher that he believed to be Egyptian and use them on the KEP to fill in missing gaps from the figures obtained from the papyri.

Now what is so horribly implausible about that? It seems quite simple and straight-forward – so simple and straight-forward that I imagine it takes quite a bit of energy to continue to refuse to see the point.

[_Nomad]

DarthJ-

Kind of like the "cipher," you mean? Kind of like how you can make up any number of guesses about what people's motives were, but you still come back to that nagging elephant in the room?

???

Do you mean to imply that there is no easily demonstrable contemporary precedent (among the Mormons in Kirtland in 1835) for enciphering Joseph Smith’s revelations? Is that what you’re trying to suggest?

Really?

And yet this affidavit is in the History of the Church, as is this:

“I commenced the translation of some of the characters or hieroglyphics, and much to our joy found that one of the rolls contained the writings of Abraham. . . . Truly we can say, the Lord is beginning to reveal the abundance of peace and truth” ( History of the Church, 2:236).

What we are in a position to know is that Joseph Smith went along with Chandler's claim.

Pardon me if I continue to fail to understand how any of this line argumentation is relevant to Schryver’s theses. Do you believe it is relevant? How?

This is the same Schryver who thinks the facsimiles should be removed from the canon.

Please cite where Schryver has said he thinks the facsimiles should be removed from the canon. Please include the full context, too. And remember that I’ve seen the quote in Paul Osborn’s sig line. All that says is that Schryver says he “wouldn’t be surprised” if one day the facsimiles are removed from the canon. That is, obviously, a lot different than expressing an opinion that they should be removed from the canon. In fact, in the Q&A session after his FAIR presentation, Schryver said that the facsimiles are a big part of the reason he believes there was an Abraham text on the scrolls. He seems to believe that the facsimiles contain material that is related to, If I recall correctly his words, “LDS temple liturgy.” That doesn’t sound like someone who “thinks the facsimiles should be removed from the canon,” does it?

No, this is just another example of how willing you people are to intentionally misrepresent things. That’s why I’ve learned to never trust anything you say, but to verify everything.

I'm talking about the overall church membership audience for the Book of Abraham, and if you have any information about W.W. Phelps, Oliver Cowdery, etc. knowing Egyptian from random scribblings in the dirt, you let us all know. Cherry-picking a few prominent early Mormons as "the majority of them" must be how you counteract "false stereotypes" of people on the 1830's frontier who had neither a 21st century worldview nor information technology.

The majority of the church membership never saw or even had any knowledge of the EAG. Only a few people did. The majority of them were well-educated men.

Once again you resort to misrepresentation. You’re obviously a person who has no problem with employing deception in your attempts to be perceived as winning an argument. I have no regard for people who do such things.

And "the issue" is, "even if you're right, so what?" Do you intend to explain that in my lifetime?

Do you mean, “even if Schryver’s theses are correct, so what?”

I can explain that quite easily. If Schryver’s theses are correct, then the Kirtland Egyptian papers are dependent on a pre-existing text of the Book of Abraham, and much of the KEP was actually designed to be a tool to encipher some of Joseph Smith’s more doctrinally innovative revelations, for reasons that remain only partially understood. All we know is that they were doing that sort of thing in Kirtland, OH in 1835. The hypothesis of the EAG as a cipher key is entirely consistent with the contemporary historical setting.

And since that evidence exists entirely of Will's words, that is exactly what you will have to use.

Really?

So his substantial word study (which I have seen in detail) that shows the obvious dependency of the Egyptian Alphabet on a pre-existing text of Abr. 1 – 3 is just “Will’s words?” His demonstration of the contextual interdependency of the EAG explanations on a pre-existing text of several passages from the Book of Abraham consisted of nothing but “Will’s words?” His display of the W.W. Phelps letter to his wife in May 1835, along with its “specimen of the pure language” that matches identically a portion of the EAG, was just “Will’s words?” His reference to the long-known 1835 enciphering of various elements of Joseph Smith’s revelations was nothing but “Will’s words?” His demonstration of the reference of the EAG to portions of D&C 76 and 88 was just “Will’s words?” His demonstration of the fact that the EAG characters (with very few exceptions) do not come from the papyri was just “Will’s words?”

It’s becoming harder and harder to take you seriously. You’re simply not capable of intelligent discourse, although I acknowledge that you are very capable when it comes to mocking people.

What is truly spectacular about this is that the statement to which I am referring is specifically in the context of Hauglid responding to you.

Hauglid was not talking about the content of Schryver’s FAIR presentation. He was talking about a new finding that has no relationship at all to Schryver’s EAG findings. Hauglid (as well as many others who are qualified to assess them) is in accord with Schryver’s findings as presented at the FAIR conference.

Once again you resort to misrepresentation. You’re obviously a person who has no problem with employing deception in your attempts to be perceived as winning an argument. I have no regard for people who do such things.

It’s becoming harder and harder to take you seriously. You’re simply not capable of intelligent discourse, which is why I see no point in continuing our conversation—although I will return in a few days to see how you did on the challenge I issued to you above.